The Not a Book Club Club discussion

Section 5

Discuss Chapter 50-end, or the book as a whole.

No spoiler tags required. Though it would be highly appreciated if you Uncheck Add to my Update Feed to avoid accidentally spoiling things for your good read friends.

Please do not discuss events from later sections/books. Referring back to events from a previous section/book is fine.

I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff. I kind of blew through this one.

I really enjoyed it. I think it might be his best one yet. There is a lot more politics and less action compared to the previous series. This last section though was loaded with the usual action.

The rematch between Ben Styke and Fidelis Jess was a bit anticlimactic. I kind of laughed. I guess he went into that first one at a huge deficit.

The immediately betrayal by Styke's sister was fantastic. I guess Viola should have followed through on her coup.

I'm glad the ice Baron lived. Or seemed to. It'd be silly to leave him close to death and then kill him off.

It's going to be interesting to see if Mikael grows into his role of Platinum Rose. But it sounds like everyone plans to evacuate while he plans to stay?

I'm glad they addressed the other God stones in the epilogue. I was worried that would be ignored. Several times we hear stones, plural. But we only have the one stone.

I'm really looking forward to the next book, and hopefully discuss it with you guys soon.

I JUST finished. I have a lot of thoughts stirring in my head.

Let's see....

Fidelas seemed to get a lot less tough at the end - he seemed pretty invincible at the start, and especially Mikael being able to knock him out surprised me. But yeah I think fighting the dragon man, and running to his old friend clearly took a lot out of Ben. Well the fact that he grabbed the knife blade and just let it slice through his fingers was pretty epic.

I like that Mikael is planning to stay and protect the city. That is kind of cool, especially since he's not a fighter.

I think the Ice Baron lived too. I loved how he sacrificed his ships and basically saved the day. He was a neat character all the way through - his stories towards the first of starting his ice business were pretty funny - how it all melted etc.

I really liked this book. I liked the first trilogy a lot, but I think I liked this even more.

I'm curious about Mikael getting the drop on Fidelas too. A healthy Ben, I can buy. But that seems fishy.

However he's been decapitated, so it can't have been much of a trick. Maybe Fidelis just drastically underestimated Michal?

That could be it. we heard many times that Mikael isn't a fighter.

Was anyone confused by the marble ability/magic that Michel had? In his first scene, he tells the recruit to put his prior self in a "marble" so that he could focus on being a Blackhat.

You could interpret that as just a coping mechanism but then it turns out that Michel uses that mechanism to hide his real self/memories from his Blackhat persona.

Then he retrieves his real self once he finally meets Taniel for the first time.

Then in chapter 50 it says that Michel puts his real self back in the marble but is still thinking about Taniel and his real mission.

This was never really cleared up in the end and for me it really took a lot away from the character.

I'm confused now! Lol I just thought of it as compartmentalizing, not an actual ability I think.

In Chapter 37, it makes it sound like the "marble" is something more than just compartmentalizing. It's very taxing on him when he retrieves his true persona; he breaks down and starts crying when he realizes who he really is. A bit too much not to be the result of some sort of magic. Plus, if he ever got caught, is the "marble" really going to stand up to torture etc. if it is just some really good compartmentalizing?

Rob was mentioning too about Michael's knack - sounds like you maybe figured out what it is!

Actually I was asking about Ben's knacked. I didn't know/realize Micael was knacked at all, and apparently completely missed this bit about a marble..

I'm still not sure about the marble actually being Michel's Knack. It's never mentioned as a Knack specifically. And that would be pretty convenient that his Knack happened to be that he could create alternate personas by locking away his real memories.

Yeah that would be convenient. I missed the marble part too - it makes me wish I had the print version to go back and search for that.

I loved this one too and ran through it quickly.

I wonder if Fidelas is really dead.

The final fight and Micael getting the drop on him were odd given how he was built up early on. There was a point in the middle of the book where Fedelas is described as being disheveled, looking worse than he ever had, and generally being off his game.

I think the inference was he was busy trying to keep a lid on everything and fraying, but I wondered if it was a 'side-effect' of being someone else (maybe with similar magic to Ka-Poel's disguise magic).

That's as far as I've gotten. And don't have any theories about to see who else may have 'appeared' around the same time or thought through who he could also be. It seems like if Taniel and Ka-Poel could have 'alternates' than Jes could as well.

That never crossed my mind Scott, but it could be! Especially since we know that, although Ka-Poel is strong, the other blood mages are more experienced. Hmm...interesting thought.

I kept thinking that Scott. He just died too easy..